Jean-Luc Marion | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1946-07-03)3 July 1946 (age 79) |
| Academic background | |
| Education | Lycée Condorcet |
| Alma mater | École normale supérieure |
| Thesis | Le fondement du savoir dans la pensée de Descartes (1980) |
| Doctoral advisor | Ferdinand Alquié |
| Academic work | |
| Era | 20th-/21st-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School or tradition | |
| Main interests | Philosophical theology,Phenomenology,Descartes |
| Notable ideas | "As muchreduction, as much givenness," saturated phenomenon, theintentionality of love,counter-experience |
Jean-Luc Marion (French:[ʒɑ̃lykmaʁjɔ̃]; born 3 July 1946) is a Frenchphilosopher andCatholic theologian. A former student ofJacques Derrida, his work is informed bypatristic andmystical theology,phenomenology, andmodern philosophy.[1]
Much of his academic work has dealt withDescartes and phenomenologists likeMartin Heidegger andEdmund Husserl, but also religion.God Without Being, for example, is concerned predominantly with an analysis ofidolatry, a theme strongly linked in Marion's work withlove and thegift, which is a concept also explored at length by Derrida.
Marion was born inMeudon,Hauts-de-Seine, on 3 July 1946. He studied at the University of Nanterre (now theUniversity Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense) and theSorbonne and then did graduate work in philosophy from theÉcole normale supérieure in Paris from 1967 to 1971, where he was taught byJacques Derrida,Louis Althusser andGilles Deleuze.[2] At the same time, Marion's deep interest in theology was privately cultivated under the personal influence of theologians such asLouis Bouyer,Jean Daniélou,Henri de Lubac, andHans Urs von Balthasar. From 1972 to 1980 he studied for his doctorate and worked as an assistant lecturer at the Sorbonne. After receiving his doctorate in 1980, he began teaching at theUniversity of Poitiers.[2]
From there he moved to become the Director of Philosophy at theUniversity Paris X – Nanterre, and in 1991 also took up the role ofprofesseur invité at the Institut Catholique de Paris.[3] In 1996 he became Director of Philosophy at the University of Paris IV (Sorbonne), where he taught until 2012.
Marion became a visiting professor at theUniversity of Chicago Divinity School in 1994. He was then appointed the John Nuveen Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and Theology there in 2004, a position he held until 2010.[4] That year, he was appointed the Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Professor of Catholic Studies at the Divinity School, a position that had been vacated by the retirement of theologianDavid Tracy.[5] He retired from Chicago in 2022. He continues to serve on the Editorial Advisory Panel of the journalQuaestio.
On 6 November 2008, Marion was elected as animmortel by theAcadémie Française. Marion now occupiesseat 4, an office previously held by CardinalLustiger.[6][7][8] In 2014, he delivered theGifford Lectures onGivenness and Revelation at theUniversity of Glasgow.[9]
Marion'sphenomenological work is set out in three volumes which together form atriptych[12] ortrilogy.[13]Réduction et donation: Etudes sur Husserl, Heidegger et la phénoménologie (1989) is an historical study of the phenomenological method followed byHusserl andHeidegger, with a view towards suggesting future directions for phenomenological research. The unexpected reaction thatRéduction et donation provoked called for clarification and full development. This was addressed inÉtant donné: Essai d'une phénoménologie de la donation (1997), a more conceptual work investigating phenomenological givenness, the saturated phenomenon and the gifted—a rethinking of the subject.Du surcroît (2001) provides an in-depth description of saturated phenomena.[14]
Marion claims that he has attempted to "radically reduce the whole phenomenological project beginning with the primacy in it of givenness".[15] What he describes as his one and only theme is the givenness that is required before phenomena can show themselves in consciousness—"whatshows itself firstgives itself.[16] This is based on the argument that any and all attempts to lead phenomena back to immanence in consciousness, that is, to exercise the phenomenological reduction, necessarily results in showing that givenness is the "sole horizon of phenomena"[17]
Marion radicalizes this argument in the formulation, "As much reduction, as much givenness",[18] and offers this as a new first principle ofphenomenology, building on and challenging prior formulae ofHusserl andHeidegger.[19] The formulation common to both, Marion argues, "So much appearance, so much Being", adopted fromJohann Friedrich Herbart,[20] erroneously elevatesappearing to the status of the "sole face of Being". In doing so, it leaves appearing itself undetermined, not subject to thereduction, and thus in a "typically metaphysical situation".[21]
The Husserlian formulation, "To the things themselves!", is criticized on the basis that the things in question would remain what they are even without appearing to a subject—again circumventing the reduction or even without becoming phenomena. Appearing becomes merely a mode of access to objects, rendering the formulation inadequate as a first principle of phenomenology.[22] A third formulation, Husserl's "Principle of all Principles", states "thatevery primordial datorIntuition is a source of authority (Rechtsquelle) for knowledge, thatwhatever presents itself in'intuition'...is simply to be accepted as it gives itself out to be, thoughonly within the limits in which it then presents itself."[23] Marion argues that while the Principle of all Principles places givenness as phenomenality's criterion and achievement, givenness still remains uninterrogated.[24] Whereas it admits limits to intuition ("as it gives itself..., though only within the limits in which it presents itself"), "givenness alone is absolute, free and without condition"[25]
Givenness then is not reducible except to itself, and so is freed from the limits of any other authority, including intuition; a reduced given is either given or not given. "As much reduction, as much givenness" states that givenness is what the reduction accomplishes, and any reduced given is reduced to givenness.[26] The more a phenomenon is reduced, the more it is given. Marion calls the formulation the last principle, equal to the first, that of the appearing itself.[27]
| To whom are the things in question led back by the reduction? | What is given by the reduction? | How are the things in question given; what is the horizon? | How far does the reduction go, what is excluded? | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First reduction – transcendental (Husserl) | The intentional and constitutingI | Constituted objects | Through regionalontologies. Through formal ontology, regional ontologies fall within the horizon of objectivity | Excludes everything that does not let itself be led back to objectivity |
| Second reduction – existential (Heidegger) | Dasein: an intentionality broadened to Being-in-the-world and led back to its transcendence of beings through anxiety | The different ways of Being; the "phenomenon of Being" | According to Being as the original and ultimate phenomenon. According to the horizon of time | Excludes that which does not have to be, especially the preliminary conditions of the phenomenon of Being, e.g.boredom, the claim |
| Third reduction – to givenness (Marion) | Theinterloqué: that which is called by the claim of the phenomenon[29] | The gift itself; the gift of rendering oneself toor of eluding the claim of the call | According to the horizon of the absolutely unconditional call and of the absolutely unconstrained response | Absence of conditions and determinations of the claim. Gives all that can call and be called |
By describing the structures of phenomena from the basis of givenness, Marion claims to have succeeded in describing certain phenomena that previous metaphysical and phenomenological approaches either ignore or exclude—givens that show themselves but which a thinking that does not go back to the given is powerless to receive.[30] In all, three types of phenomena can be shown, according to the proportionality between what is given inintuition and what isintended:
Marion defines "saturated phenomena," which contradicts the Kantian claim that phenomena can only occur if they are congruent with thea priori knowledge upon which an observer's cognitive function is founded. For example, Kant would claim that the phenomenon "three years is a longer period of time than four years" cannot occur.[37]
According to Marion, "saturated phenomena" (such as divine revelation) overwhelm the observer with their complete and perfect givenness, such that they are not shaped by the particulars of the observer's cognition at all. These phenomena may be conventionally impossible, and still occur because their givenness saturates the cognitive architecture innate to the observer.[38][39]
The fourth section of Marion's workProlegomena to Charity is entitled "The Intentionality of Love" and primarily concernsintentionality andphenomenology. Influenced by (and dedicated to) the French philosopherEmmanuel Levinas, Marion explores the human idea of love and its lack of definition: "We live with love as if we knew what it was about. But as soon as we try to define it, or at least approach it with concepts, it draws away from us."[40] He begins by explaining the essence of consciousness and its "lived experiences." Paradoxically, the consciousness concerns itself with objects transcendent and exterior to itself, objects irreducible to consciousness, but can only comprehend its 'interpretation' of the object; the reality of the object arises from consciousness alone. Thus the problem with love is that to love another is to love one's own idea of another, or the "lived experiences" that arise in the consciousness from the "chance cause" of another: "I must, then, name this lovemy love, since it would not fascinate me as my idol if, first, it did not render to me, like an unseen mirror, the image of myself. Love, loved for itself, inevitably ends as self-love, in the phenomenological figure of self-idolatry."[40] Marion believes intentionality is the solution to this problem, and explores the difference between theI who intentionally sees objects and theme who is intentionally seen by a counter-consciousness, another, whether theme likes it or not. Marion defines another by its invisibility; one can see objects through intentionality, but in the invisibility of the other, oneis seen. Marion explains this invisibility using thepupil: "Even for a gaze aiming objectively, the pupil remains a living refutation of objectivity, an irremediable denial of the object; here for the first time, in the very midst of the visible, there is nothing to see, except an invisible and untargetable void...my gaze, for the first time, sees an invisible gaze that sees it."[40] Love, then, when freed from intentionality, is the weight of this other's invisible gaze upon one's own, the cross of one's own gaze and the other's and the "unsubstitutability" of the other. Love is to "render oneself there in an unconditional surrender...no other gaze must respond to the ecstasy ofthis particular other exposed in his gaze." Perhaps in allusion to a theological argument, Marion concludes that this type of surrender "requires faith."[40]
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